Farming takes root in the city

Friday

Jun 23, 2017 at 2:13 PMJun 23, 2017 at 3:18 PM

THE ISSUE: The state Department of Agricultural Resources is preparing to award grants to urban farming projects.THE IMPACT: In five years, the DAR has awarded nearly $1.5 million in grants for 51 projects and nearly 20 organizations.

Gerry Tuoti Wicked Local Newsbank Editor

Long the domain of rural areas, commercial farming operations are now starting to take root in urban neighborhoods.

“Demand has been really strong for this,” said Rose Arruda, urban agriculture coordinator for the Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources, which has awarded approximately $1.5 million in urban farming grants over the past five years.

Perched up on rooftops, packed into greenhouses or spread across vacant lots, urban farmers grow a variety of crops to sell to customers in their communities.

High above Boston’s Seaport District, John Stoddard and Courtney Hennessey began farming the roof of the Boston Design Center in 2013. Dubbed “Higher Ground Rooftop Farm,” they lined up several Boston restaurants as customers and sold fresh produce out of kiosks on site at the Boston Design Center.

While working to fine tune his business model, Stoddard decided last year to narrow his focus to supplying smaller numbers of restaurants with fresh ingredients. This year, he’s devoting most of his attention to Boston Medical Center, which hired him to run a 2,300-square-foot rooftop farm that provides produce for the hospital’s food services program and food pantry.

“It’s great that the at the city and state level they are being supportive of trying to figure out how to make urban agriculture work and thrive,” Stoddard said.

Since it launched its urban agriculture grant program in 2012, the state has awarded funding to projects in cities across the state, including Somerville, Salem, Boston and Worcester. The Department of Agricultural Resources will begin reviewing applications for the next round of grant funding in July.

“It’s state money and we want to make sure the money we’re expending is supporting economic development in communities,” Arruda said.

Ed Davidian, president of the Massachusetts Farm Bureau Federation, said he supports the state’s investment in urban farming grants, as long as public funds aren’t being sunk into unviable enterprises.

“I think it’s a good thing, but sometimes you wonder whether the input equals the yield,” he said. “I don’t know if it works on an economic scale, but it could be good in little niche markets. I’m sure it works in some applications and not in others.”

While traditional farms often rely on machinery, it’s not practical to use tractors and other equipment on rooftop farms or in urban settings. For city farms, that means more manpower is often needed. A large portion of their operating costs, therefore, are devoted to payroll.

While community gardens have been around for decades in many cities, commercial urban agriculture is a newer trend.

“A community garden plot is really for personal use,” Arruda said. “An urban farm is a real business. It’s intensively farmed to have produce, vegetables and fruit available for sale in that community.”

Some sell to local restaurants. Others sell to customers who sign up for a farm share, or Community Supported Agriculture program. Most offer their crops at farmers’ markets, and many also donate produce to local food pantries.

The “eat local” movement, which has generated new interest in where food comes from, has helped fuel the small, but growing, number of urban farms in the state, Arruda said.

“I feel like the dust has really settled where that farm-to-table excitement has died down and now the folks who are really serious about farming have stuck with it,” she said.